October 6, 2025 • 53 mins
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In this special 200th episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we are joined by Monica Wright, growth and demand generation leader with deep experience in both marketing operations and demand generation. Monica brings a rare dual perspective on what it takes for marketing and operations teams to work together effectively.
In this episode, Monica discusses the often-overlooked challenge of mutual understanding, why marketers need to understand how Ops professionals work, and why they must understand marketing strategy to drive real business impact. She shares insights from her career leading, building, and advising teams, offering practical advice for bridging gaps, improving collaboration, and maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing organization.
You will learn:
- Why cross-functional understanding between marketing and Ops is critical for success
- How Ops and marketing teams can better communicate and align on goals
- Strategies to ensure Ops adds measurable value while supporting marketing initiatives
- Lessons from real-world experience building and scaling high-performing teams
This episode is ideal for marketing leaders, demand generation professionals, and MOps teams seeking to enhance collaboration and achieve a more significant impact throughout the organization.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Hello everyone.
Welcome to the 200th episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com.
I am your host, Michael Hartman,Flying Solo.
One of these days we'll get Mikeand Naomi back on as well.
As a reminder, Mopsapalooza iscoming up in how about a month.
So if you haven't got yourtickets, get those now.
(00:21):
For this special milestoneepisode, we're joined by someone
who brings a real dualperspective, having worked
deeply in both demand gen andmarketing operations.
So joining me today is MonicaWright.
Monica is a growth and demandgeneration leader who has led
ops teams, hired them, anddepended on them.
She is a growth and go-to-marketadvisor, and she's here to talk
about the often overlearedchallenge of mutual
(00:43):
understanding, why marketersneed to know more about how ops
works and why ops teams need tounderstand how the rest of
marketing works to truly driveimpact.
So, Monica, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02 (00:53):
Thanks.
I'm so excited to be here.
You've never, you know, I'vebeen floating around the mops
community for a long time now,and um it's a great opportunity.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
We're glad to have you.
So, and this is a topic that Iyou know our longtime listeners
will know that I'm a bigadvocate for of mutual
understanding.
So, but let's start with yourbackground.
I covered a little bit of it.
You've worked across both demandgen and operations.
So how I'm curious how that hasappro uh shaped your approach as
a marketer.
SPEAKER_02 (01:22):
Oh, sure.
Well, actually, if you're opento going a little bit further
back, um, I actually come frompublishing.
I mean, even further back, likeback in the days when there were
paper routes, I had those.
Yeah, and you know, you had apaper route.
Okay.
I did, and my sisters inhainherited them too.
SPEAKER_00 (01:41):
So I I was I was a backfill for my friends who had
them in Minnesota.
Um, during the holidays, theywould they would the Sunday
delivery on a winter day inMinnesota on a bicycle, not so
fun.
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
Yeah, I've done that.
Only, you know, in you know, inMassachusetts.
But so I get that.
I absolutely get that.
Lots of Walkman's broken, lotsof batteries you know, expired,
you know, no helmet.
But um it was, you know, and Iwas thinking about this earlier
today, and I had this ahamoment.
It's like, wow, you know, I wasI was in the middle of of you
(02:19):
know, collecting money, talkingto customers, delivering the
content at 12 years old.
Like I was that person, and wewould get like requests to like
ask, ask our subscribers, youknow, you know, questions about
you know, feedback and all thatstuff.
And you know, at 12, I was like,well, that's kind of like an ops
(02:42):
marketing thing.
And I didn't even realize thattill this morning.
So anyway, I thought I'd I'dshare that little anecdote.
But yes, I was first inpublishing, um, you know, from
B2B publishing to newspaperpublishing.
And what was really interestingwas, you know, it was really
about uh you could say, oh yeah,that was all content marketing.
(03:02):
Sure, yes, it was, but it wasn'tmostly circulation.
So we were we were essentially,you know, building out when
newspapers gone online, buildingout products, you know, to
attract audiences, right?
So my background really was inthat notion of audience
development.
And um, and when the early 2000scame about, the notion also of
(03:29):
search and retreat contentretrieval, you know, exploded as
every, you know, as one does.
And so I made the move over tosearch, had that sweet spot
working for Third Door Media forabout 10 years or so.
Um, and so I got to talk aboutdigital marketing, marketing
technology to audienceseverywhere.
(03:51):
And and that's that was that'sreally where it started, you
know.
So um I had the pleasure once,um, you know, during COVID,
there were some changes, but Ihad the pleasure once of
actually interviewing.
I was like, you know what?
After working and launchingmarktech.org, being part of that
team, like, you know, it's timefor me to go into a software
(04:13):
environment and reallyunderstand how these businesses
are marketing, you know, becauseI was I was the media person,
right?
So we were building theaudiences for these SaaS
companies.
Right.
And so I was like, let's flipthat a little bit.
I had that opportunity, and youknow, there was this one time I
had this interview with this onegal, and she was like, Oh, you
don't have any direct softwareexperience.
(04:34):
So I was like, no, but literallyhung up on me, like on a screen,
right?
So crazy.
Like I need to be, I need to getmy butt into into in-house.
And and so what really happenedwas like it was out of
necessity, you know.
I had to understand how theseframeworks work.
I already knew what the who theplayers were on, you know, from
(04:56):
Martech.
Um, and you know, we we had tobuild on our own, especially
when when the organizations werereally scrappy.
So that's that's really how itended, you know.
It's like understanding um bothsides um really um, you know,
(05:16):
understanding those functions,you know, just you can't you
can't do one without the other.
And especially if you're likethe one person, you're figuring
it out all on your own, youknow.
Even back in the old, you know,early SEO days and building your
own blog.
I mean, we all had to figure itout on our own.
And where we got traction wassharing that information.
So yeah, and and it was allcommunity-led, but so when we
(05:42):
when we talked before, you saidthat um there's a number of
marketers who oftenunderestimate how much they
depend on their ops teams or opsperson, sometimes it's just a
person.
SPEAKER_00 (05:53):
Yeah, what do you what if you were to give advice
to marketers, um, yeah, I guessgeneral marketers, demand gen
marketers, what do you what likewhat would you recommend to them
in terms of trying to understandwhat goes on behind the scenes
within the ops realm?
SPEAKER_02 (06:11):
Yeah, you know, this is something I'm really, you
know, it's really important tome because I've seen it play out
so many different ways atdifferent organizations, you
know, and the notion ofoperations being downstream or
the ones that are reacting torequests, um, it doesn't, you
(06:34):
know, I think marketers justsome some marketers, not all of
them, but they just don'trealize this how ops is the
strategic um backbone, like thenervous system, right?
You know, you've got product,you know, which is you know, the
heart and soul, and then you'vegot the nervous system that
really pulls it together.
And um, and so it's not justabout keeping the lights on,
(06:57):
right?
And it's and it's designingthose systems for the entire
go-to-market motion.
And and I think um, you know,though just just that
philosophy, rather thanrealizing that MOPS is is you
know our you know tacticaldepartment, you know, they're
(07:18):
really a strategic organization,if you will, or a function that
is the glue, you know, thataccelerates, that um drives the
accountability in a way, youknow, because they're the data
folks, um, or we are the datafolks.
Um they're the ones like they'rejust they have the overarching
(07:40):
vision of how uh you know thecampaigns are working, but also
how the full go-to-market motionis working, right?
So um, and it's also about Ithink keeping the teams sane,
you know.
So if if there's this um, youknow, I think a good operations
(08:02):
team will protect the marketers'energy in a way.
You know, they're notquestioning the data.
They can focus on what they cando best, they can, they can um
collaborate a little bit betterand really focus on who the
customers are, you know, ratherthan rather than, oh, this
form's broken.
(08:22):
You know, it's just I think it'sI think there's this mutual
importance and trust that needsto happen.
And um, and it's definitely notdownstream.
SPEAKER_00 (08:33):
Yeah.
So let I mean let's take it fromthe other side then.
So yeah, what what would youtell marketing ops professionals
to be doing to better understandhow to support their marketing
teams?
Sure.
Um, and maybe even go beyondthat, right?
To me, it's I I think of doingthat for both marketing and
sales, especially the well, Ithink of it in the B2B sense.
(08:54):
So what's your take on that?
SPEAKER_02 (08:57):
So um I think ops folks, you know, first of all,
getting out of the reactivemode, you know, being proactive,
right?
And so instead of waiting forthe campaigns to launch and then
scrambling to get the theinformation or to track them or
to facilitate them, um, it needsto be part of that initial
(09:21):
conversation.
And I also think um having agreat ops team can be a
translator in a way, right?
Between the marketing, thecreativity, the messaging, and
what the business reality is,right?
And so, you know, it's I I'veworked with organizations that
(09:44):
really considered marketing asthis like arts and crafts
emotion, you know.
It's the present the PowerPointteam, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're the PowerPoint team, we'rethe ones that are getting stuff
printed, that sort of thing.
And what this, you know, theoperational piece of that, I
think, you know, they're theones that are really
(10:05):
understanding what's possiblebehind the systems.
And they're the ones that arebuilding the new infrastructure.
They're the ones that, or we arethe ones that are bridging
between, oh, wouldn't it begreat if we could do this
versus, oh, this is what we canactually do and make it work by
scale, right?
Make it grow.
And I think that element isreally uh important.
(10:29):
I also think um ops teams reallyown the data story, you know.
They're the ones that aredetermining or assisting, like
determining the metrics totrack.
They're the ones that or we are,I should really say we, because
you know, it is marketers too.
We're the ones that are, youknow, telling the teams about
(10:50):
what the customers are doing,what the campaigns are like,
what the pipeline is, how thepipeline's performing, you know,
where are the bottlenecks,what's not working, what is
working, and creating thataccountability across that whole
whole team.
So it's not just aboutmarketing, but it's more on the
revenue side and the wholebusiness side of things.
SPEAKER_00 (11:10):
Yeah.
I it's um, I mean, I think a lotof marketing ops folks uh get
frustrated because they feellike they're just being told
what to do, do this regularlyreactive.
And I my my kind of my responseto that is some of this is on
you, right?
And that you like I think thisis where the understanding is
important, right?
You need to understand, youshould really understand how you
(11:33):
know how the business makesmoney.
That's like number one.
But like if you're partneringwith marketing teams, you should
understand what it is that theydo, um, what it is that they're
trying to achieve.
Yeah.
Because then you combine thatwith what you described, right?
Understanding what's possibleand that you can then um be a
trusted advisor, right?
SPEAKER_02 (11:55):
Well, that's it.
The trust piece, you know,you're creating that option is
creating that confidence, notjust in the data, but in the
whole oper, you know, the wholego-to-market operation.
You know, they're the ones thatare um, we again, you know, you
know, focus, they can we canfocus on the accountability, we
(12:17):
can focus on, you know, um, youknow, recommending what actions
to take, um, recommending, okay,we can repeat this process
really easily and scale it,right?
Um, this is what's reallymeeting our ICP versus just you
know a plethora of leads comingin, or this is what we should
(12:41):
really do in terms of, well,maybe we should focus on
retention rather thanacquisition.
You know, these are these arethe teams that you know have
their the fingers everywhere,you know, and really are the
conductors to make it all work.
SPEAKER_00 (12:58):
Um yeah.
I mean, I've got a like Iremember a this is actually
before I think marketing ops waseven a term, but I had a role
where which was with I think ittoday it would have been
probably in marketing ops orclose to it.
But I had a a product marketingteam I was working with at a big
company, and they wanted to,they're like, we want to put uh
(13:19):
uh a form on our website to letpeople give us feedback or yeah,
you know, give us ideas.
And I was like, I was like, areyou sure you want to do that?
Like, yes, we should do that.
I was like, okay, let me justwalk you through what's gonna
happen, right?
Building a form and getting onthe page and capturing that,
easy.
Actually, it's really easy.
So, but then what you're doing,but what you're doing is you're
setting up an expectation forthese people that you're going
(13:41):
to do something based on that.
Yeah.
What are you gonna do?
Right, then what?
And yeah, it was silence, right?
I said that's the like to me,that was a way of pushing back
on it's like I don't have aproblem with doing that as long
as you have a plan for whatyou're gonna do that's gonna be
realistic.
Um because if we do that, um Iactually thought the risk was
(14:04):
higher of disappointing orangering customers and prospects
if we did that, because weweren't gonna do anything.
Yeah.
In which case, we're asking themto give up a lot without getting
anything in return.
SPEAKER_02 (14:16):
Right, right.
And I and I think and you know,based on your previous question
about, oh, you know, whymarketers should really
understand.
I mean, this day and age, it's alot more prolific.
I mean, you know, it's assumed.
But even five years ago, itwasn't assumed.
You know, like, well, we need tofind out all the things, and
(14:38):
we're gonna have this form witha gazillion different data
points, and we're gonna do this,and we're gonna do that.
Okay, well, what are you gonnado with it?
You know, and and it that shouldreally be a joint conversation.
That shouldn't be up to ops orthe you know, the marketer.
I mean, I think it that's athat's that's the full and and
sales.
I mean, it's not and product,you know, it's not just it's not
(15:00):
just I'm so glad you said that,right?
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
I mean, because it's like I think a lot of teams,
it's a lot of times the salesprocess part of it gets gets
left out.
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Yeah, and and that's really where you know this
whole, you know, this holisticvision or view, um, and where
ops lives in that holistic view.
I mean, it is all equal parts,in my opinion, you know, you
know, uh it is all equal parts.
And it's not a downstreamfunction, especially now with
(15:28):
just the prolific softwareoptions and AI and the
expectations of buyers and theexpectations of customers and
users and everything.
I mean, it is the nervoussystem, 100%.
SPEAKER_00 (15:44):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think I think ifyou get to that point and you
understand how all these thingswork, uh, where they work well,
where they don't work well, andif you understand the marketing
and sales process and how thesewhat's in what's driving
behavior, right?
There's a little bit of thepsychology part of it.
Yeah, you then can you can be ina position to be the kind of
(16:05):
person who goes, doesn't justsay yes, we can go do that.
I mean, sometimes that's right,you you absolutely should, and
sometimes sometimes uh youshouldn't.
But like to me, like there'salways in many cases for like
big new ideas, like there'strade-offs, right?
Yeah, marketing guy comes like,I'm so excited, I've got this
great idea, right?
(16:25):
And they describe it and you golike, I love that idea, but
here's how we can get close,right?
I think that's a differentconversation than saying, no, we
can't do that.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Yeah, right.
And I think that's really wherethat that coalition or you know,
that team mentality really needsto happen.
I mean, and unfortunately, Imean, it's still a lot of
places, it's just stilldownstream, it's still extremely
reactive.
But that um that and it's notjust the technical, the
(16:58):
technical piece, I think.
You know, it's really aboutokay, who who are we trying to
reach?
You know, who's the ICP?
You know, it's like, oh, well,sales is going to sell to these
easy wins, but they don't reallymeet this broader campaign.
But oh, we gotta go hurry up andgo do that because we need to
reach whatever quota or whatevergoals that we have in place.
SPEAKER_01 (17:20):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:21):
And it doesn't meet the other thing.
And so everybody gets allcompletely distracted because
sales is saying, well, I need toreach my goals.
Marking's like, well, you've gotthese campaigns in the can, and
then you've got ops saying,Well, what am I supposed to do?
Right.
And um that's why it just needsto be jointly owned, and without
a doubt.
SPEAKER_00 (17:40):
Without a doubt.
Well, and that is funny.
I was just talking to somebodytoday, a marketer, we were
talking about how marketers havenever actually gone through the
customer experience of whathappens when they say, fill out
a form, right?
What is that gonna be like whatis the customer's experience
gonna be like?
Oh, yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_02 (17:58):
Hey, that's wild for me, especially as someone, you
know, we've had to build.
I mean, I've done, I've done um,you know, migrations, I've done
all that, you know, I've donebad data, I've seen bad email
deliverability, I've seenspamming senses, I've seen all
kinds of things.
And that should not, thereshould be like there should be
(18:20):
like a test.
I really think so.
You know, it's like, okay, ifyou feel like, you know, just a
casual conversation.
If you are, if you're joining,you know, a podcast, me, for
example, now what am I gonna dowith it?
Oh, yeah, sure, I'll take thetranscript and I'll do all this
cool stuff.
Okay, then what?
Right?
Right.
Then what?
You know, oh I'm gonna put it onLinkedIn.
(18:41):
Okay, then what?
Right?
What are you gonna do with it?
Right.
And how are you going to takeadvantage of that?
And some of that is likeoperational.
A lot of that is operational.
Yeah.
And, you know, who, you know,and it it just makes it makes a
world of difference to have thatthat foundation.
And I, you know, like I said,uh, you know, I've been part of
(19:03):
like bigger technical migrationsand and building from scratch.
I've been in instances where,you know, there are no campaigns
in place, yet they want theywant results, you know.
I mean, like, you know, it'sjust it's uh it's enough to want
to stick a fork in your eye, butbeing able to articulate,
especially from the operationalside, how that is just so
(19:24):
crucial.
SPEAKER_00 (19:25):
Yeah.
Yeah, totally, I totally agree.
So uh okay, switching gears alittle bit, um, especially given
your kind of what you're doingnow with advisory kind of stuff.
Um one of the things you you yousaid to me when we talked was
that um assumptions about growthcan be risky without a clear
picture of like what the dataprocess technology tools are and
(19:48):
what like what the implicationsare there.
So, but can you unpack that alittle bit for us?
SPEAKER_02 (19:53):
Sure.
Um, absolutely.
Um and I've seen this play outuh over and over again, and and
it's such a big trap, right?
And so when when a company orpart is when you know when
you're scaling, you know,there's always this constant
pressure um to show results veryquickly.
(20:16):
And you know, and then someonecomes to you with a with a shiny
new simple thing, shiny new,yeah, simple, right?
Uh process change, or you youknow, you hear about I've got
this idea and it's gonna solveall our problems.
There's this temptation um towant to believe that that growth
(20:39):
trajectory is going to beextremely straightforward and in
one direction.
And when we make thoseassumptions without that solid
foundation of understanding thediscovery piece, you know, if
you don't audit, you know, yourdata, if you don't document what
you get for workflows, um, andI'm you know, I'm putting on my
(21:02):
ops hat for a second, you know,if you don't map out how that
stack is actually connecting,not just on the go-to-markets,
like also with the productteams, any sales tech, you could
you could really just cause alot of chaos, you know?
(21:23):
And um, and there's you know,I've been in situations where
this belief where you could justlayer on more campaigns and more
and more and more.
And if you double that, you'regonna double your output.
And you're not, you know, itdoesn't work that way.
And and and it's thoseassumptions that sometimes can
(21:44):
create like a domino effect,too.
So, you know, especially, youknow, if your foundation is bad,
the data will get messier ifyou're building just more and
more on top of that.
The reporting gets, you know,there you lose the trust, you
start, people start pointingfingers at each other,
leadership doesn't believe you.
Um, and then that easy, shinynew thing, that fix, is it
(22:08):
becomes that drag that everybodyelse is trying to accomplish
this when when everybody's justtrying to fix stuff, right?
And so getting sucked into thatad hoc siloed, you know, mode of
being reactive, just you know,it just what it does is it like
(22:29):
it fixes yesterday's problem,but it doesn't serve what you're
supposed to get it do in sixmonths from now or the
opportunity that might presentitself later.
And and um I think that payoffis really critical, you know,
and sometimes it's just you haveto there's a pill to swallow
(22:50):
right now in order to make itbetter later.
And um, and that foundation workis not exciting, you know, it is
not exciting, and uh but it'sbetter than having a broken team
and bad feelings and a lot ofchurn for the customers.
SPEAKER_00 (23:07):
Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because I think
there's this paradox that peopledon't realize is there, and you
hinted at it, which is theeasiest example is say you have
a team and you double the size,right?
You think, well, we can doublethe output.
Yeah, the reality is there'sinefficiencies that happen you
get more people involved.
That's right.
And the same the same can betrue if you've got um, I don't
(23:28):
want to even say siloed, right?
It could still be teams that tryto work together, but where you
have different people doingdifferent things apart uh across
part of a process, saydeveloping uh a piece of
content, right, that requires acut, you know, there's some
teams that are doingcopywriting, there's creative,
you're putting it together,you're getting it posted to the
website.
Like one of the things I oftensee is that um, hey, we want to
(23:51):
we want to pump up how muchcontent we're gonna publish.
And especially now with AI, Isuspect that's really an
expectation.
Yeah.
What I find is the thing thatcauses problems is like uh the
uh underlying lack of trustbetween these teams, right?
Which then leads to layers ofreview and approval uh that
(24:12):
tends to then put things in thisloop of not so this idea that
you could do more, you know, islike it's not like yes, you
could do more, and you probablyget some incremental
improvements by putting pressureon the same team or even adding
a person or something like that.
But if you don't fix theunderlying trust issue,
expectation of reviewedapproval, um, that somebody like
(24:36):
it's never gonna it's nevergonna go to the multiple that
you think it is because well,first off, it never will because
it's just not realistic.
But yeah, second, like if youdon't solve that, and I see that
cause problems in teams all thetime.
SPEAKER_02 (24:49):
Yeah, yeah.
And that's a lack of clarityfrom a leadership point of view,
too, right?
I mean, I think some of that'sclarity, not just from the team
point, like like leadershipneeds to own that, that trust, I
think.
You know, I mean, it's not justmy job to just, I mean, sure, I
should trust my ops team, Ishould trust the creative team,
(25:10):
project management, whoever, ofcourse, of course, right?
But if leadership is up here andsales is saying something else,
or if you know, engineerssomething, you know, I have no
control over that, right?
And so, and so you could be thebest marketer, best
collaborator, best team member,most knowledgeable of
everything.
(25:30):
But if there's no trust, itdoesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter.
And um, and that trust takestime.
And I think that's where likethere's that disconnect.
You know, trust has to beatspeed, you know, it always does
because it takes a long time tobuild that trust, and it only
takes a little bit to just breakit in half, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
But you have to have that trust to to be able to get
as much as you can out of thatincrease, right?
Yeah.
Um, but the the flip side ofthat is also important, which is
like you may have the initialtrust, but there needs to be um
you could pick the right word,right?
Forgiveness, grace, whateverside of it.
And I guess you know, yeah,because because there are
(26:12):
mistakes mistakes will be made.
Of course.
Of course.
Uh and it's a matter of um nottreating those as like so.
If you go to this one kind of uhto some degree, right, an
extreme where you trust peopledo the right thing and a mistake
is made, and you just say, Oh,well, damn it, we need to go to
the other extreme.
(26:33):
Yeah, you're not really solvingthe problem long term.
You're just gonna cause moreproblems, different different
kinds of problems.
SPEAKER_02 (26:41):
Right, right.
And you know, there's there I'vebeen in the situation, I'm sure
you have too, where you know,from a marketing point of view,
I was actually just talking touh a gal who's a chief digital
marketing officer, a new rolefor her, and she was talking to
me about oh, how the sales teamare making like marketing
recommendations on their searchmarketing programs.
It's like, what?
(27:02):
Nobody should be doing that.
They should trust you, you'redoing whatever you're doing,
right?
They should just trust that.
Nobody should be doing that.
And and I've you know, I've beenthere.
It's like I can do my job.
Let's go, let's go over here andreally look at it from a full
picture, you know.
So rather than just saying, oh,it's marketing fault, this sale,
(27:23):
you know, it's uh no, it's notqualified, or well, you're not
closing, you know.
That's like it's you know, itdoesn't it spirals, that's a
negative death spiral, right?
Yeah, yeah, that is a spiralthat we do not like.
SPEAKER_00 (27:34):
My dogs don't like it, they're they're uh adding
theirs to this.
SPEAKER_02 (27:37):
Oh, good.
See, yeah, we love dogs.
Um if I could just have dogs onmy team with dog lovers, I'd be
psyched.
unknown (27:46):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:47):
Um, okay, so so you you've kind of touched on this
as a bit as well, too, right?
There's a lot of teams that aredoing highly manual processes or
powering through things to getget things done.
They're being, I would say,heroic, right?
This is more on the upside.
So um, you know, how would you,if you were coming into an
(28:09):
organization, you start seeingthis?
Like, what would your advice beto them?
And maybe uh say you got themwondering, like, what were the
what would be the signs you seethat an organization is headed
into that direction wherethey're relying too much on
brute force?
SPEAKER_02 (28:24):
Yeah, you know, brute force, you know, I it how
many times have we seen thathappen?
It's like we just need to getthrough this, you know, we just
need to teach.
SPEAKER_00 (28:33):
I like brute force.
This is why I played rugbyinstead of played something that
requires it depends.
SPEAKER_02 (28:38):
I, yes, you know, but um when you know, okay, here
it is like you can actually seesome of some of these gaps like
right away.
Just the you know, some youcould call them red flags or
whatever.
If you're always in brute forcemode, you're going to spend it's
(29:00):
not efficient, right?
You're you know, everybody'sgonna be spending more time
wrestling with with the systemsor or um, you know, and when I
say wrestling with the system,it's like, oh, I just don't know
how to use housework.
No, it's like you're buildingstuff in spreadsheets, you're
you don't know if that's new orold, you don't know if um you
(29:25):
know if campaigns are beingmanaged, like if you've got
everything in spreadsheet, howhow can you tell if you're in
trouble or not?
How can you tell what thecustomer journey is like?
How can you in and I'm notsaying this is the case, you
know, for for an organizationthat's really, really small and
they're just trying to solve aproblem and scale up to be more
(29:46):
of a product market fit.
That's not not what I'm saying.
You know, I mean, sometimes youjust need brute force just to
get the get the money in thedoor.
But when you're not sure, or youwhere you can't see, when you
can't see patterns.
Right.
And even if you have hired themost brilliant folks in the
world, um, you're gonna losemomentum.
(30:07):
And time is of the essence.
And if and if you can't fix whatyou don't understand, that's the
problem, right?
And and skipping that thatpiece, you know, for example,
switching platforms for becausesomebody doesn't like the notion
of lead object versus contactobject or whatever, you know, it
(30:33):
you're gonna lose time.
You're gonna lose time.
You're not you're gonna alsolose that trust that we just
spoke about, right?
And you've got um, you're notgonna be able to connect the
data to the results or theoutput that you really want.
You're going to have all thismanual information, which is
probably not even secure in thefirst place.
Then you've got um, you know,and you're you're not building
(30:56):
any resilience for futuregrowth.
And um, and so instead of likeserving your customer or really
trying to grow that piece, whichis what we're all about, you're
juggling a gazillion differentspreadsheets and and um and
answering questions like like,how do I get this report?
(31:18):
And that's not true.
And you know, um, I can't react,you know, my my workflow and
turn, you know, this lead camein, but I didn't get it, and you
know, because it went to some,you know, I it that just can't
you can't function that way,especially now.
You know, I mean the buyingjourney is you know, we our
(31:40):
buyers, you know, I'm a buyer,you're a buyer in our different
ways.
We want our answers now, we'renot waiting till some guy or
some gal gets kind of ourinformation and then does the
research and puts my name in aspreadsheet and asks permission
or whatever, you know.
unknown (31:58):
No.
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
I mean, the problem with brute force stuff, and I
was only joking that I became afan of the Well, no, I there's
places for brute force.
SPEAKER_02 (32:05):
No, no, I'm with you, right?
SPEAKER_00 (32:06):
Oh, I'm changing change of fields, you know, like
no, no, when you're making thatdecision consciously, but I
think what you're describing iswhen the default mode is brute
force, um, what what I becauseit because the pressure to
deliver more doesn't go away.
Well, it ends up happening,brute force tends to also go
(32:27):
with manual, which also meansnow you're putting a lot of
people in your yeah, um it leadsto more mistakes, is my
experience.
Well, a lot more, for sure.
Because it's just it yeah, it'shighly manual.
You've got people who are tryingto do too much too fast, and it
just leads to more mistakes.
So I'm wondering though, then isthat mean that um there are
(32:51):
reasonable times to take a pauseif you recognize that this is
starting to affect your yourteam?
And I think this is mostly forleaders out there when you
recognize your team is goingthrough like their brute force,
lots of manual stuff, and I'mnot saying everything should be
automated because I do notbelieve that, but when you're
seeing that affecting your teamand the quality of the work and
the timeliness of the work andmeeting commitments, does it
(33:14):
make sense to go like let'spause?
Right?
Yes, kind of slow down, yes, tryto get things in order, and then
we can we can speed up afterthat, right?
Once we'll just yeah, yeah.
Have you have you gone throughanything like that before?
SPEAKER_02 (33:31):
Um, I have.
Um I have when I was atStreamSets, which is now part of
IBM, there is this product uhcalled Transformers Snowflake.
I mean, it was it's a dataintegration product, right?
And uh they're doing some um youcould transform your data within
within Snowflake.
And it was like all of a suddensix weeks, you know, six weeks.
(33:54):
It wasn't just because SnowflakeSummit was happening, so there's
that event-led stuff, but thenthere was we have to turn off
all the campaigns, we have tobuild this out, we have to find
the ICP, we've got to find allthe stuff, you know, now the
state, you know, and we werebrute forcing it.
You know, there was no, we werebrute forcing to the N degree
because we had this event comingup.
We were relying on our partnermotions, we were relying on um
(34:17):
also on product, right?
And we had this nice great bigidea of also like, oh, let's do
a free trial with these guystoo, right?
So then we had to pull like theproduct data in part of you
know, part of the automation.
Right.
But you know what?
Because of that brute force, youknow, we actually had to turn it
(34:37):
off because the experience washokey.
But the the and this was acouple years ago now.
So, but what we did learn, welearned something from that.
What we learned was, you knowwhat, if we did that with that
focus, we were just focusing onthat campaign, focus.
Um, you know, can you hear mydog snoring?
Forgive me.
(34:58):
Um uh with that focus, what we,you know, we learned part of a
part of part of the charm of ourour uh podcast, is it?
SPEAKER_00 (35:05):
Real scenes.
SPEAKER_02 (35:08):
Um you know the it was like contract, you know,
accounts were closing like fourtimes faster because of that
focus.
And that's really, you know, ityou know, there's some other
metrics around that, but that'syou know, where brute force can
happen if you're doing it out ofnot just necessity, but but then
(35:29):
you have to say, okay, stop.
How can we iterate from that?
What what did we learn from thatthat we can automate?
What can we do as part of ourpart of our campaign structure,
you know, future planning, thatsort of thing.
SPEAKER_00 (35:42):
Yeah.
I mean, I think I think bruteforcing something for a
time-limited kind of thing,right?
And and one that you go into itgoing like we don't anticipate
that we're gonna repeat this onany kind of regular basis,
right?
I think that's when it makessense.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Um, and I'm all for that.
(36:02):
I'm all for that as opposed togoing out and buying some new
tool, right?
Which is a pretty big shape,right?
That's the yeah.
Um, so that leads me to anotherquestion.
And so in like you, I thinkyou've mostly been in at least
in a marketing role, like highgrowth, constrained resources
environments.
(36:23):
So one of the challenges withthose probably is prioritization
and making sure that you'reeffectively communicating gross
functions.
Like, so what are some lessonsyou've learned from that?
And then my second one, and thisbecause I think there's people
like me who have less of thatexperience and more larger
organizations.
How well do you think some ofthose lessons would scale to
(36:45):
those larger organizations?
SPEAKER_02 (36:46):
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, okay, we can't doeverything, you know, and I
think that the idea of growth atall costs is outdated at this
point, right?
Um, there's uh to a point, twopoint, two point, right?
Um, you know, so this hits homebecause you know, that scrappy
(37:11):
high growth environment whereyou have to you have to know
how, what, who, where, when, allthat, and what resources you
have, you can learn a lot ofthose extremely hard truths
really, really fast, you know.
Sure.
And so, and so this is, youknow, where prioritization, of
course, we just talked aboutthat, but but the folk, the
(37:36):
biggest learning recent, it iseven more recent than anything,
is like, because we can't boilthe ocean, map out, you know,
for an example.
Here's an example of like data.
Um you know, you got webmetrics, you've got campaign
metrics, ad spend, all thesethings, rather than saying,
(37:59):
okay, this is how many web, youknow, website visits we've had
and how many conversions we had,like, okay, instead of that,
tell me the percentage of ourICP that did that.
Tell me that's what I want.
Just focus on that ICP, focus onwho you're trying to reach.
And so that language of just ICPor target accounts or becomes
(38:24):
the focus instead of saying, oh,look at our traffic, you know,
tripled last month, and it'slike, well, yeah, because we
were all at, you know, thisevent.
How many of those, I don't care.
I want to know what the ICP isdoing.
So that's one way to focus thatum is really, I think, critical,
(38:45):
and everybody can get on boardwith, right?
Sales would love it, sure, loveit, execs would love it.
So rather than talking about allthose vanity metrics about, oh,
hey, look at all the people onLinkedIn, like, yeah, sure, but
how many of those are targetaccounts, right?
Um, also that cross-functionalum collaboration, right?
(39:06):
So, you know, we talked aboutsilos a little bit, but you
know, embedding those otherfunctions like within the
process.
So if you're gonna have acustomer success motion, like,
you know, if they're sharingfeedback, have that part of that
function, right?
So it's not just, it's not justokay, Markins doing this and ops
(39:28):
is doing this and and sales isdoing this or whatever.
It's essentially forcing thatregular engagement within the
team, you know, and makingeveryone understand how their
role connects with the finaloutput, which is revenue, you
know.
And I think that's those are thetwo big things.
(39:49):
So we talk, you know, we talkeda little bit about the data, but
also just the team.
It's like, okay, here we'rerefocusing.
So if you're gonna talk to meabout random acts of marketing,
because this webinar would beawesome.
Random acts of marketing.
I love it.
Yeah, that's yeah.
My former VP of marketing uhused to say that it's like,
nope, we're not doing that.
It's a random act of marketing,not on plan, you know, it's not
(40:09):
meeting our ICP.
It's a nice to have, we're notdoing that.
And it's not like beingdraconian about it, it's about
focus.
SPEAKER_00 (40:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so just uh for ops folksout there, like my rule of thumb
in terms of prioritization, likeif there's a a problem with lead
flow, that's generally where I'dlike I give that highest
priority, right?
Even if that means bumping alonger term strategic project.
Sure.
Thing.
Um, because I want I don't wantto be the one, particularly if
(40:37):
it's hand raisers, right?
People who Right.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (40:41):
That's always mission critical.
And also, you know, if you're ifyour campaign, you know, if you
have an email problem, missioncritical.
SPEAKER_00 (40:47):
Yeah, I know.
So like a deliverabilityreputation and that kind of
thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's becoming uh from myrecent experience, it feels like
that's becoming more common tohave issues with that with all
the changes with like whatGoogle's doing and Microsoft's
doing and everybody else, allthe major email providers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um so I want to go back to thiscollaboration piece because I
(41:10):
think one of the one of thethings that breaks down is um
terminology, communication.
Oh yeah.
How do you how do you like howdo you like it?
Feels like there needs to be apart of that is making this is
kind of getting back in themutual understanding piece,
right?
How do you make sure that you'rewhen you're saying things, the
other person's nodding theirhead that are actually have the
(41:30):
same thing in their head, or atleast close to what you were
meaning, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_02 (41:34):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, this is sounderestimated.
Like I I don't even sounderestimated, you know, even
like naming conventions forfolders, right?
Even campaign namingconventions.
Um, that that notion of thatglossary, it's like one of the
first things I've I've alwaysdone, you know, manually.
(41:56):
It's like in, you know, whileyou're talking, you're you're
onboarding with teams and whathave you.
It's like, okay, and yourqualified lead is, and how do
you know it scores?
You know, like that thatvocabulary, and it's everybody
needs to speak the samelanguage, you know.
So when they see a campaignnaming, you know, they know
(42:19):
which campaign that is, who thetarget is, and all that stuff.
They should be able to see that.
They should know that.
That's part of the efficiency.
You know, I nobody needs agazillion, you know, death by
slack cuts, you know, like nomore, no more.
Here's the documentation.
We all agreed on it, too.
(42:40):
That's the other piece, right?
It's like that agreed, andthat's part of like that SLA um
agreement, like that internalagreement.
It's like, okay, this is howwe're defining a lead.
A qualified lead is this type ofaccount, this type of you know,
pharmac, technographic, whathave you.
And then it's like, okay, hereare the customers we want to
grow.
This is why they fit these percriteria.
(43:03):
I mean, it should be front andcenter for the entire team, not
just you know, the marketers andsales, but you know, ops kind of
owns that in a way, you know, orwell, not even just owns it, but
is the keeper, is the gatekeeperof that.
And I am I'm a firm believer ofthat, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:22):
I I even go like up a level.
SPEAKER_02 (43:25):
Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (43:25):
Oh, sure.
Like I don't mean up a level inorganization, maybe up a level
in terms of the thought processis that um so I as you were
talking about, you use the wordscampaign, you use the word lead,
and I think I think theirassumptions, yeah, this is the
whole trope, assumptions.
Yeah, uh, I think they theyactually cause problems, right?
(43:45):
Because people assume you saidcampaign, uh, and I go, oh,
well, you mean a campaign recordin Salesforce or in the right.
SPEAKER_01 (43:55):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (43:55):
Or what you meant was uh there's this broader
campaign that includes we'regoing to do digital media, we're
gonna do stuff on our website,we're gonna send emails, like
all these things, right?
Oh yeah.
Well, like those are verydifferent things.
And I see that very often wherelike we've got this campaign, or
what's going on with thiscampaign, or you know, leads is
another one, right?
(44:15):
Or is it a lead in Salesforce?
Is it a is it uh a qualifiedlead?
Is it somebody who's a returningprospect?
Like those terms, right, requireclarity because it leads to
misunderstandings.
SPEAKER_02 (44:29):
Yes, like that, yes, and it makes um reporting really
hard, it makes telling yourstory really hard, it it makes
everything extremely umdifficult.
And so I used the word draconianearlier.
I am completely draconian aboutthis stuff, you know.
I because because there I don'twant any surprises, you know.
(44:51):
If we talk about marketingqualified accounts, what does
that mean?
Yeah, what does that mean?
It could mean anything, youknow.
SPEAKER_00 (44:59):
So that so that if you pull a report out of
Salesforce and you get the samenumbers, right?
SPEAKER_02 (45:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And you know, and and if thereare questions, you know, it's
documented somewhere.
Right.
You know, there's a there's awiki, there's a document,
whatever.
This is what a marketingqualified account is.
Here's a link to what that listis.
Here are the you know, and andum and that communication, I
(45:28):
mean it's just that can reallysave a not just time, but a lot
of frustration and um and um umbad feelings, you know.
So we don't want that.
We don't want that.
And and we it's it's not justit's not just like you know,
tough.
I mean, I think it'sorganizationally imperative, you
(45:49):
know.
I mean the product team shouldunderstand what a product
qualified account is, right?
You know, we don't know, youknow.
SPEAKER_00 (45:56):
I actually don't even care what the terms are
that you use, as long as there'sa shared understanding of what
they are.
No, yes, I have strong opinionsabout what some of those should
be defined as.
Sure.
I'm not I'm like I'm willing tobe flexible within reason.
SPEAKER_02 (46:11):
Yeah, and you know, instead of every meeting also
becoming this debate of thetranslation of what this term
means versus what that metricmeans, whatever, it you're not
talking about that anymore.
We've already decided, you know,it's defined, done.
Let's talk about you know, howare we gonna tighten the sales
cycle?
(46:31):
How are we going to positionourselves?
Why are we not renewing, youknow, those are those are more
important for growth than thantrying to make a magic
definition of something thatsomebody thinks is important,
you know?
Couldn't agree more.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (46:50):
Well, okay, so we're let's wrap up here.
So I think I feel like we haveto end every episode with
something about AI, uh, or atleast have it as part of it,
right?
So how do how do you see AIfitting into all this dynamic,
you know?
Yeah, for marketers and opspros, what are they what do you
what are you seeing out there?
What do you would do you tellthem to watch out for?
SPEAKER_02 (47:10):
Yeah, I mean it is a force multiplier for not just
for ops teams, but foreverybody.
And um, you know, I've seen ithandle some pretty awesome
stuff.
Um I, you know, okay, I I thinkwhere we need to be careful in a
couple of areas, is obviouslyprivacy.
(47:32):
Um you know, that's a given.
But also the data quality, um,you know, is it as good, you
know, if we are feeding datainto something and we have that
layered, like HubSpot has, andyou can just type in whatever it
is that you want to find out.
Um is that is that accurate, youknow?
(47:54):
Um, is there some sort of, youknow, ghostly machine that's
just whipping up somethingrandom that thinks that based on
your history is returningsomething that you want to hear?
Um, you know, and there's alsothat, and you touched on this
earlier, this temptation ofautomating everything, right?
And um in getting so caught upon the tech and so caught up on
(48:18):
on that automation piece thatwe're losing sight of what the
customer journey is like, whatthat human element is like.
Um, you know, we it what itcomes down to is really, you
know, we're all everybody's inbusiness to build relationships
in, you know, and make some uhyou know, that's how a lot of
(48:41):
businesses are built.
Uh just fair enough.
But you know, we're we're you'regonna lose that relationship
piece or that humanity piece,and some of that nuance is also
going to be lost, like some ofyour expertise, you know, your
experiences, how you um, youknow, that strategic thinking
please.
Sure, you know, uh, you know,how are how are you but how are
(49:04):
you connecting the dots inaddition to the AI?
Sure, it's a lot of potential,but I think that seduction of AI
solving everything um is is abit is a bit hairy.
SPEAKER_00 (49:21):
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah, I think there's still alot to like it's just evolving
every day.
SPEAKER_02 (49:26):
Yeah, it is.
And there's so much potential,you know.
When I was first playing play, Iwas like, holy cow, what is
happening here?
This is all this this stuff ofwell, because it it normalized
the playing field, right?
In a way, like of go to marketentirely, you know.
It's not just offs folks, it'salso marketers, it's also, you
know, and and so opportunitieslike that are really, really
(49:51):
cool.
You know, they they really,really are.
But you also gotta think aboutautomating everything.
SPEAKER_00 (49:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if enjoy the conversation,Monica, really appreciate it.
You too, Monica.
If if the if if our listeners,followers want to follow your
work or get in touch, what's thebest way they can do that?
SPEAKER_02 (50:10):
Uh just find me on LinkedIn.
That's the best place, that'sthe most active place, that's
where we all hang out.
So Monica Wright, it's just allone word.
That's my my little URL.
SPEAKER_00 (50:21):
So got it.
Perfect.
All right.
Well, yeah, as always, uh well,and also thank you for being a
part of our 200th episode.
SPEAKER_02 (50:28):
I mean, that's like oh yes, I know.
Yay, I should have worn like 200like glasses or something.
SPEAKER_00 (50:34):
Yeah, maybe I should have, since you know, I've been
a part of most of them.
You know, well, again, thank youso much, Monica.
It's been great.
It's been uh a fun conversation.
You too.
Uh thanks to our listeners andsupporters.
As always, we are uh would loveyour feedback.
Uh, if you have any of that,please let us know.
(50:54):
And if you have ideas for topicsor guests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be
happy to talk to you about that.
Till next time.
Bye, everybody.
Hello everyone.
Welcome to the 200th episode ofOpsCast, brought to you by
MarketingOps.com.
I am your host, Michael Hartman,Flying Solo.
One of these days we'll get Mikeand Naomi back on as well.
As a reminder, Mopsapalooza iscoming up in how about a month.
So if you haven't got yourtickets, get those now.
(00:21):
For this special milestoneepisode, we're joined by someone
who brings a real dualperspective, having worked
deeply in both demand gen andmarketing operations.
So joining me today is MonicaWright.
Monica is a growth and demandgeneration leader who has led
ops teams, hired them, anddepended on them.
She is a growth and go-to-marketadvisor, and she's here to talk
about the often overlearedchallenge of mutual
(00:43):
understanding, why marketersneed to know more about how ops
works and why ops teams need tounderstand how the rest of
marketing works to truly driveimpact.
So, Monica, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02 (00:53):
Thanks.
I'm so excited to be here.
You've never, you know, I'vebeen floating around the mops
community for a long time now,and um it's a great opportunity.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
We're glad to have you.
So, and this is a topic that Iyou know our longtime listeners
will know that I'm a bigadvocate for of mutual
understanding.
So, but let's start with yourbackground.
I covered a little bit of it.
You've worked across both demandgen and operations.
So how I'm curious how that hasappro uh shaped your approach as
a marketer.
SPEAKER_02 (01:22):
Oh, sure.
Well, actually, if you're opento going a little bit further
back, um, I actually come frompublishing.
I mean, even further back, likeback in the days when there were
paper routes, I had those.
Yeah, and you know, you had apaper route.
Okay.
I did, and my sisters inhainherited them too.
SPEAKER_00 (01:41):
So I I was I was a backfill for my friends who had
them in Minnesota.
Um, during the holidays, theywould they would the Sunday
delivery on a winter day inMinnesota on a bicycle, not so
fun.
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
Yeah, I've done that.
Only, you know, in you know, inMassachusetts.
But so I get that.
I absolutely get that.
Lots of Walkman's broken, lotsof batteries you know, expired,
you know, no helmet.
But um it was, you know, and Iwas thinking about this earlier
today, and I had this ahamoment.
It's like, wow, you know, I wasI was in the middle of of you
(02:19):
know, collecting money, talkingto customers, delivering the
content at 12 years old.
Like I was that person, and wewould get like requests to like
ask, ask our subscribers, youknow, you know, questions about
you know, feedback and all thatstuff.
And you know, at 12, I was like,well, that's kind of like an ops
(02:42):
marketing thing.
And I didn't even realize thattill this morning.
So anyway, I thought I'd I'dshare that little anecdote.
But yes, I was first inpublishing, um, you know, from
B2B publishing to newspaperpublishing.
And what was really interestingwas, you know, it was really
about uh you could say, oh yeah,that was all content marketing.
(03:02):
Sure, yes, it was, but it wasn'tmostly circulation.
So we were we were essentially,you know, building out when
newspapers gone online, buildingout products, you know, to
attract audiences, right?
So my background really was inthat notion of audience
development.
And um, and when the early 2000scame about, the notion also of
(03:29):
search and retreat contentretrieval, you know, exploded as
every, you know, as one does.
And so I made the move over tosearch, had that sweet spot
working for Third Door Media forabout 10 years or so.
Um, and so I got to talk aboutdigital marketing, marketing
technology to audienceseverywhere.
(03:51):
And and that's that was that'sreally where it started, you
know.
So um I had the pleasure once,um, you know, during COVID,
there were some changes, but Ihad the pleasure once of
actually interviewing.
I was like, you know what?
After working and launchingmarktech.org, being part of that
team, like, you know, it's timefor me to go into a software
(04:13):
environment and reallyunderstand how these businesses
are marketing, you know, becauseI was I was the media person,
right?
So we were building theaudiences for these SaaS
companies.
Right.
And so I was like, let's flipthat a little bit.
I had that opportunity, and youknow, there was this one time I
had this interview with this onegal, and she was like, Oh, you
don't have any direct softwareexperience.
(04:34):
So I was like, no, but literallyhung up on me, like on a screen,
right?
So crazy.
Like I need to be, I need to getmy butt into into in-house.
And and so what really happenedwas like it was out of
necessity, you know.
I had to understand how theseframeworks work.
I already knew what the who theplayers were on, you know, from
(04:56):
Martech.
Um, and you know, we we had tobuild on our own, especially
when when the organizations werereally scrappy.
So that's that's really how itended, you know.
It's like understanding um bothsides um really um, you know,
(05:16):
understanding those functions,you know, just you can't you
can't do one without the other.
And especially if you're likethe one person, you're figuring
it out all on your own, youknow.
Even back in the old, you know,early SEO days and building your
own blog.
I mean, we all had to figure itout on our own.
And where we got traction wassharing that information.
So yeah, and and it was allcommunity-led, but so when we
(05:42):
when we talked before, you saidthat um there's a number of
marketers who oftenunderestimate how much they
depend on their ops teams or opsperson, sometimes it's just a
person.
SPEAKER_00 (05:53):
Yeah, what do you what if you were to give advice
to marketers, um, yeah, I guessgeneral marketers, demand gen
marketers, what do you what likewhat would you recommend to them
in terms of trying to understandwhat goes on behind the scenes
within the ops realm?
SPEAKER_02 (06:11):
Yeah, you know, this is something I'm really, you
know, it's really important tome because I've seen it play out
so many different ways atdifferent organizations, you
know, and the notion ofoperations being downstream or
the ones that are reacting torequests, um, it doesn't, you
(06:34):
know, I think marketers justsome some marketers, not all of
them, but they just don'trealize this how ops is the
strategic um backbone, like thenervous system, right?
You know, you've got product,you know, which is you know, the
heart and soul, and then you'vegot the nervous system that
really pulls it together.
And um, and so it's not justabout keeping the lights on,
(06:57):
right?
And it's and it's designingthose systems for the entire
go-to-market motion.
And and I think um, you know,though just just that
philosophy, rather thanrealizing that MOPS is is you
know our you know tacticaldepartment, you know, they're
(07:18):
really a strategic organization,if you will, or a function that
is the glue, you know, thataccelerates, that um drives the
accountability in a way, youknow, because they're the data
folks, um, or we are the datafolks.
Um they're the ones like they'rejust they have the overarching
(07:40):
vision of how uh you know thecampaigns are working, but also
how the full go-to-market motionis working, right?
So um, and it's also about Ithink keeping the teams sane,
you know.
So if if there's this um, youknow, I think a good operations
(08:02):
team will protect the marketers'energy in a way.
You know, they're notquestioning the data.
They can focus on what they cando best, they can, they can um
collaborate a little bit betterand really focus on who the
customers are, you know, ratherthan rather than, oh, this
form's broken.
(08:22):
You know, it's just I think it'sI think there's this mutual
importance and trust that needsto happen.
And um, and it's definitely notdownstream.
SPEAKER_00 (08:33):
Yeah.
So let I mean let's take it fromthe other side then.
So yeah, what what would youtell marketing ops professionals
to be doing to better understandhow to support their marketing
teams?
Sure.
Um, and maybe even go beyondthat, right?
To me, it's I I think of doingthat for both marketing and
sales, especially the well, Ithink of it in the B2B sense.
(08:54):
So what's your take on that?
SPEAKER_02 (08:57):
So um I think ops folks, you know, first of all,
getting out of the reactivemode, you know, being proactive,
right?
And so instead of waiting forthe campaigns to launch and then
scrambling to get the theinformation or to track them or
to facilitate them, um, it needsto be part of that initial
(09:21):
conversation.
And I also think um having agreat ops team can be a
translator in a way, right?
Between the marketing, thecreativity, the messaging, and
what the business reality is,right?
And so, you know, it's I I'veworked with organizations that
(09:44):
really considered marketing asthis like arts and crafts
emotion, you know.
It's the present the PowerPointteam, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're the PowerPoint team, we'rethe ones that are getting stuff
printed, that sort of thing.
And what this, you know, theoperational piece of that, I
think, you know, they're theones that are really
(10:05):
understanding what's possiblebehind the systems.
And they're the ones that arebuilding the new infrastructure.
They're the ones that, or we arethe ones that are bridging
between, oh, wouldn't it begreat if we could do this
versus, oh, this is what we canactually do and make it work by
scale, right?
Make it grow.
And I think that element isreally uh important.
(10:29):
I also think um ops teams reallyown the data story, you know.
They're the ones that aredetermining or assisting, like
determining the metrics totrack.
They're the ones that or we are,I should really say we, because
you know, it is marketers too.
We're the ones that are, youknow, telling the teams about
(10:50):
what the customers are doing,what the campaigns are like,
what the pipeline is, how thepipeline's performing, you know,
where are the bottlenecks,what's not working, what is
working, and creating thataccountability across that whole
whole team.
So it's not just aboutmarketing, but it's more on the
revenue side and the wholebusiness side of things.
SPEAKER_00 (11:10):
Yeah.
I it's um, I mean, I think a lotof marketing ops folks uh get
frustrated because they feellike they're just being told
what to do, do this regularlyreactive.
And I my my kind of my responseto that is some of this is on
you, right?
And that you like I think thisis where the understanding is
important, right?
You need to understand, youshould really understand how you
(11:33):
know how the business makesmoney.
That's like number one.
But like if you're partneringwith marketing teams, you should
understand what it is that theydo, um, what it is that they're
trying to achieve.
Yeah.
Because then you combine thatwith what you described, right?
Understanding what's possibleand that you can then um be a
trusted advisor, right?
SPEAKER_02 (11:55):
Well, that's it.
The trust piece, you know,you're creating that option is
creating that confidence, notjust in the data, but in the
whole oper, you know, the wholego-to-market operation.
You know, they're the ones thatare um, we again, you know, you
know, focus, they can we canfocus on the accountability, we
(12:17):
can focus on, you know, um, youknow, recommending what actions
to take, um, recommending, okay,we can repeat this process
really easily and scale it,right?
Um, this is what's reallymeeting our ICP versus just you
know a plethora of leads comingin, or this is what we should
(12:41):
really do in terms of, well,maybe we should focus on
retention rather thanacquisition.
You know, these are these arethe teams that you know have
their the fingers everywhere,you know, and really are the
conductors to make it all work.
SPEAKER_00 (12:58):
Um yeah.
I mean, I've got a like Iremember a this is actually
before I think marketing ops waseven a term, but I had a role
where which was with I think ittoday it would have been
probably in marketing ops orclose to it.
But I had a a product marketingteam I was working with at a big
company, and they wanted to,they're like, we want to put uh
(13:19):
uh a form on our website to letpeople give us feedback or yeah,
you know, give us ideas.
And I was like, I was like, areyou sure you want to do that?
Like, yes, we should do that.
I was like, okay, let me justwalk you through what's gonna
happen, right?
Building a form and getting onthe page and capturing that,
easy.
Actually, it's really easy.
So, but then what you're doing,but what you're doing is you're
setting up an expectation forthese people that you're going
(13:41):
to do something based on that.
Yeah.
What are you gonna do?
Right, then what?
And yeah, it was silence, right?
I said that's the like to me,that was a way of pushing back
on it's like I don't have aproblem with doing that as long
as you have a plan for whatyou're gonna do that's gonna be
realistic.
Um because if we do that, um Iactually thought the risk was
(14:04):
higher of disappointing orangering customers and prospects
if we did that, because weweren't gonna do anything.
Yeah.
In which case, we're asking themto give up a lot without getting
anything in return.
SPEAKER_02 (14:16):
Right, right.
And I and I think and you know,based on your previous question
about, oh, you know, whymarketers should really
understand.
I mean, this day and age, it's alot more prolific.
I mean, you know, it's assumed.
But even five years ago, itwasn't assumed.
You know, like, well, we need tofind out all the things, and
(14:38):
we're gonna have this form witha gazillion different data
points, and we're gonna do this,and we're gonna do that.
Okay, well, what are you gonnado with it?
You know, and and it that shouldreally be a joint conversation.
That shouldn't be up to ops orthe you know, the marketer.
I mean, I think it that's athat's that's the full and and
sales.
I mean, it's not and product,you know, it's not just it's not
(15:00):
just I'm so glad you said that,right?
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
I mean, because it's like I think a lot of teams,
it's a lot of times the salesprocess part of it gets gets
left out.
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Yeah, and and that's really where you know this
whole, you know, this holisticvision or view, um, and where
ops lives in that holistic view.
I mean, it is all equal parts,in my opinion, you know, you
know, uh it is all equal parts.
And it's not a downstreamfunction, especially now with
(15:28):
just the prolific softwareoptions and AI and the
expectations of buyers and theexpectations of customers and
users and everything.
I mean, it is the nervoussystem, 100%.
SPEAKER_00 (15:44):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think I think ifyou get to that point and you
understand how all these thingswork, uh, where they work well,
where they don't work well, andif you understand the marketing
and sales process and how thesewhat's in what's driving
behavior, right?
There's a little bit of thepsychology part of it.
Yeah, you then can you can be ina position to be the kind of
(16:05):
person who goes, doesn't justsay yes, we can go do that.
I mean, sometimes that's right,you you absolutely should, and
sometimes sometimes uh youshouldn't.
But like to me, like there'salways in many cases for like
big new ideas, like there'strade-offs, right?
Yeah, marketing guy comes like,I'm so excited, I've got this
great idea, right?
(16:25):
And they describe it and you golike, I love that idea, but
here's how we can get close,right?
I think that's a differentconversation than saying, no, we
can't do that.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Yeah, right.
And I think that's really wherethat that coalition or you know,
that team mentality really needsto happen.
I mean, and unfortunately, Imean, it's still a lot of
places, it's just stilldownstream, it's still extremely
reactive.
But that um that and it's notjust the technical, the
(16:58):
technical piece, I think.
You know, it's really aboutokay, who who are we trying to
reach?
You know, who's the ICP?
You know, it's like, oh, well,sales is going to sell to these
easy wins, but they don't reallymeet this broader campaign.
But oh, we gotta go hurry up andgo do that because we need to
reach whatever quota or whatevergoals that we have in place.
SPEAKER_01 (17:20):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:21):
And it doesn't meet the other thing.
And so everybody gets allcompletely distracted because
sales is saying, well, I need toreach my goals.
Marking's like, well, you've gotthese campaigns in the can, and
then you've got ops saying,Well, what am I supposed to do?
Right.
And um that's why it just needsto be jointly owned, and without
a doubt.
SPEAKER_00 (17:40):
Without a doubt.
Well, and that is funny.
I was just talking to somebodytoday, a marketer, we were
talking about how marketers havenever actually gone through the
customer experience of whathappens when they say, fill out
a form, right?
What is that gonna be like whatis the customer's experience
gonna be like?
Oh, yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_02 (17:58):
Hey, that's wild for me, especially as someone, you
know, we've had to build.
I mean, I've done, I've done um,you know, migrations, I've done
all that, you know, I've donebad data, I've seen bad email
deliverability, I've seenspamming senses, I've seen all
kinds of things.
And that should not, thereshould be like there should be
(18:20):
like a test.
I really think so.
You know, it's like, okay, ifyou feel like, you know, just a
casual conversation.
If you are, if you're joining,you know, a podcast, me, for
example, now what am I gonna dowith it?
Oh, yeah, sure, I'll take thetranscript and I'll do all this
cool stuff.
Okay, then what?
Right?
Right.
Then what?
You know, oh I'm gonna put it onLinkedIn.
(18:41):
Okay, then what?
Right?
What are you gonna do with it?
Right.
And how are you going to takeadvantage of that?
And some of that is likeoperational.
A lot of that is operational.
Yeah.
And, you know, who, you know,and it it just makes it makes a
world of difference to have thatthat foundation.
And I, you know, like I said,uh, you know, I've been part of
(19:03):
like bigger technical migrationsand and building from scratch.
I've been in instances where,you know, there are no campaigns
in place, yet they want theywant results, you know.
I mean, like, you know, it'sjust it's uh it's enough to want
to stick a fork in your eye, butbeing able to articulate,
especially from the operationalside, how that is just so
(19:24):
crucial.
SPEAKER_00 (19:25):
Yeah.
Yeah, totally, I totally agree.
So uh okay, switching gears alittle bit, um, especially given
your kind of what you're doingnow with advisory kind of stuff.
Um one of the things you you yousaid to me when we talked was
that um assumptions about growthcan be risky without a clear
picture of like what the dataprocess technology tools are and
(19:48):
what like what the implicationsare there.
So, but can you unpack that alittle bit for us?
SPEAKER_02 (19:53):
Sure.
Um, absolutely.
Um and I've seen this play outuh over and over again, and and
it's such a big trap, right?
And so when when a company orpart is when you know when
you're scaling, you know,there's always this constant
pressure um to show results veryquickly.
(20:16):
And you know, and then someonecomes to you with a with a shiny
new simple thing, shiny new,yeah, simple, right?
Uh process change, or you youknow, you hear about I've got
this idea and it's gonna solveall our problems.
There's this temptation um towant to believe that that growth
(20:39):
trajectory is going to beextremely straightforward and in
one direction.
And when we make thoseassumptions without that solid
foundation of understanding thediscovery piece, you know, if
you don't audit, you know, yourdata, if you don't document what
you get for workflows, um, andI'm you know, I'm putting on my
(21:02):
ops hat for a second, you know,if you don't map out how that
stack is actually connecting,not just on the go-to-markets,
like also with the productteams, any sales tech, you could
you could really just cause alot of chaos, you know?
(21:23):
And um, and there's you know,I've been in situations where
this belief where you could justlayer on more campaigns and more
and more and more.
And if you double that, you'regonna double your output.
And you're not, you know, itdoesn't work that way.
And and and it's thoseassumptions that sometimes can
(21:44):
create like a domino effect,too.
So, you know, especially, youknow, if your foundation is bad,
the data will get messier ifyou're building just more and
more on top of that.
The reporting gets, you know,there you lose the trust, you
start, people start pointingfingers at each other,
leadership doesn't believe you.
Um, and then that easy, shinynew thing, that fix, is it
(22:08):
becomes that drag that everybodyelse is trying to accomplish
this when when everybody's justtrying to fix stuff, right?
And so getting sucked into thatad hoc siloed, you know, mode of
being reactive, just you know,it just what it does is it like
(22:29):
it fixes yesterday's problem,but it doesn't serve what you're
supposed to get it do in sixmonths from now or the
opportunity that might presentitself later.
And and um I think that payoffis really critical, you know,
and sometimes it's just you haveto there's a pill to swallow
(22:50):
right now in order to make itbetter later.
And um, and that foundation workis not exciting, you know, it is
not exciting, and uh but it'sbetter than having a broken team
and bad feelings and a lot ofchurn for the customers.
SPEAKER_00 (23:07):
Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because I think
there's this paradox that peopledon't realize is there, and you
hinted at it, which is theeasiest example is say you have
a team and you double the size,right?
You think, well, we can doublethe output.
Yeah, the reality is there'sinefficiencies that happen you
get more people involved.
That's right.
And the same the same can betrue if you've got um, I don't
(23:28):
want to even say siloed, right?
It could still be teams that tryto work together, but where you
have different people doingdifferent things apart uh across
part of a process, saydeveloping uh a piece of
content, right, that requires acut, you know, there's some
teams that are doingcopywriting, there's creative,
you're putting it together,you're getting it posted to the
website.
Like one of the things I oftensee is that um, hey, we want to
(23:51):
we want to pump up how muchcontent we're gonna publish.
And especially now with AI, Isuspect that's really an
expectation.
Yeah.
What I find is the thing thatcauses problems is like uh the
uh underlying lack of trustbetween these teams, right?
Which then leads to layers ofreview and approval uh that
(24:12):
tends to then put things in thisloop of not so this idea that
you could do more, you know, islike it's not like yes, you
could do more, and you probablyget some incremental
improvements by putting pressureon the same team or even adding
a person or something like that.
But if you don't fix theunderlying trust issue,
expectation of reviewedapproval, um, that somebody like
(24:36):
it's never gonna it's nevergonna go to the multiple that
you think it is because well,first off, it never will because
it's just not realistic.
But yeah, second, like if youdon't solve that, and I see that
cause problems in teams all thetime.
SPEAKER_02 (24:49):
Yeah, yeah.
And that's a lack of clarityfrom a leadership point of view,
too, right?
I mean, I think some of that'sclarity, not just from the team
point, like like leadershipneeds to own that, that trust, I
think.
You know, I mean, it's not justmy job to just, I mean, sure, I
should trust my ops team, Ishould trust the creative team,
(25:10):
project management, whoever, ofcourse, of course, right?
But if leadership is up here andsales is saying something else,
or if you know, engineerssomething, you know, I have no
control over that, right?
And so, and so you could be thebest marketer, best
collaborator, best team member,most knowledgeable of
everything.
(25:30):
But if there's no trust, itdoesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter.
And um, and that trust takestime.
And I think that's where likethere's that disconnect.
You know, trust has to beatspeed, you know, it always does
because it takes a long time tobuild that trust, and it only
takes a little bit to just breakit in half, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
But you have to have that trust to to be able to get
as much as you can out of thatincrease, right?
Yeah.
Um, but the the flip side ofthat is also important, which is
like you may have the initialtrust, but there needs to be um
you could pick the right word,right?
Forgiveness, grace, whateverside of it.
And I guess you know, yeah,because because there are
(26:12):
mistakes mistakes will be made.
Of course.
Of course.
Uh and it's a matter of um nottreating those as like so.
If you go to this one kind of uhto some degree, right, an
extreme where you trust peopledo the right thing and a mistake
is made, and you just say, Oh,well, damn it, we need to go to
the other extreme.
(26:33):
Yeah, you're not really solvingthe problem long term.
You're just gonna cause moreproblems, different different
kinds of problems.
SPEAKER_02 (26:41):
Right, right.
And you know, there's there I'vebeen in the situation, I'm sure
you have too, where you know,from a marketing point of view,
I was actually just talking touh a gal who's a chief digital
marketing officer, a new rolefor her, and she was talking to
me about oh, how the sales teamare making like marketing
recommendations on their searchmarketing programs.
It's like, what?
(27:02):
Nobody should be doing that.
They should trust you, you'redoing whatever you're doing,
right?
They should just trust that.
Nobody should be doing that.
And and I've you know, I've beenthere.
It's like I can do my job.
Let's go, let's go over here andreally look at it from a full
picture, you know.
So rather than just saying, oh,it's marketing fault, this sale,
(27:23):
you know, it's uh no, it's notqualified, or well, you're not
closing, you know.
That's like it's you know, itdoesn't it spirals, that's a
negative death spiral, right?
Yeah, yeah, that is a spiralthat we do not like.
SPEAKER_00 (27:34):
My dogs don't like it, they're they're uh adding
theirs to this.
SPEAKER_02 (27:37):
Oh, good.
See, yeah, we love dogs.
Um if I could just have dogs onmy team with dog lovers, I'd be
psyched.
unknown (27:46):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:47):
Um, okay, so so you you've kind of touched on this
as a bit as well, too, right?
There's a lot of teams that aredoing highly manual processes or
powering through things to getget things done.
They're being, I would say,heroic, right?
This is more on the upside.
So um, you know, how would you,if you were coming into an
(28:09):
organization, you start seeingthis?
Like, what would your advice beto them?
And maybe uh say you got themwondering, like, what were the
what would be the signs you seethat an organization is headed
into that direction wherethey're relying too much on
brute force?
SPEAKER_02 (28:24):
Yeah, you know, brute force, you know, I it how
many times have we seen thathappen?
It's like we just need to getthrough this, you know, we just
need to teach.
SPEAKER_00 (28:33):
I like brute force.
This is why I played rugbyinstead of played something that
requires it depends.
SPEAKER_02 (28:38):
I, yes, you know, but um when you know, okay, here
it is like you can actually seesome of some of these gaps like
right away.
Just the you know, some youcould call them red flags or
whatever.
If you're always in brute forcemode, you're going to spend it's
(29:00):
not efficient, right?
You're you know, everybody'sgonna be spending more time
wrestling with with the systemsor or um, you know, and when I
say wrestling with the system,it's like, oh, I just don't know
how to use housework.
No, it's like you're buildingstuff in spreadsheets, you're
you don't know if that's new orold, you don't know if um you
(29:25):
know if campaigns are beingmanaged, like if you've got
everything in spreadsheet, howhow can you tell if you're in
trouble or not?
How can you tell what thecustomer journey is like?
How can you in and I'm notsaying this is the case, you
know, for for an organizationthat's really, really small and
they're just trying to solve aproblem and scale up to be more
(29:46):
of a product market fit.
That's not not what I'm saying.
You know, I mean, sometimes youjust need brute force just to
get the get the money in thedoor.
But when you're not sure, or youwhere you can't see, when you
can't see patterns.
Right.
And even if you have hired themost brilliant folks in the
world, um, you're gonna losemomentum.
(30:07):
And time is of the essence.
And if and if you can't fix whatyou don't understand, that's the
problem, right?
And and skipping that thatpiece, you know, for example,
switching platforms for becausesomebody doesn't like the notion
of lead object versus contactobject or whatever, you know, it
(30:33):
you're gonna lose time.
You're gonna lose time.
You're not you're gonna alsolose that trust that we just
spoke about, right?
And you've got um, you're notgonna be able to connect the
data to the results or theoutput that you really want.
You're going to have all thismanual information, which is
probably not even secure in thefirst place.
Then you've got um, you know,and you're you're not building
(30:56):
any resilience for futuregrowth.
And um, and so instead of likeserving your customer or really
trying to grow that piece, whichis what we're all about, you're
juggling a gazillion differentspreadsheets and and um and
answering questions like like,how do I get this report?
(31:18):
And that's not true.
And you know, um, I can't react,you know, my my workflow and
turn, you know, this lead camein, but I didn't get it, and you
know, because it went to some,you know, I it that just can't
you can't function that way,especially now.
You know, I mean the buyingjourney is you know, we our
(31:40):
buyers, you know, I'm a buyer,you're a buyer in our different
ways.
We want our answers now, we'renot waiting till some guy or
some gal gets kind of ourinformation and then does the
research and puts my name in aspreadsheet and asks permission
or whatever, you know.
unknown (31:58):
No.
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
I mean, the problem with brute force stuff, and I
was only joking that I became afan of the Well, no, I there's
places for brute force.
SPEAKER_02 (32:05):
No, no, I'm with you, right?
SPEAKER_00 (32:06):
Oh, I'm changing change of fields, you know, like
no, no, when you're making thatdecision consciously, but I
think what you're describing iswhen the default mode is brute
force, um, what what I becauseit because the pressure to
deliver more doesn't go away.
Well, it ends up happening,brute force tends to also go
(32:27):
with manual, which also meansnow you're putting a lot of
people in your yeah, um it leadsto more mistakes, is my
experience.
Well, a lot more, for sure.
Because it's just it yeah, it'shighly manual.
You've got people who are tryingto do too much too fast, and it
just leads to more mistakes.
So I'm wondering though, then isthat mean that um there are
(32:51):
reasonable times to take a pauseif you recognize that this is
starting to affect your yourteam?
And I think this is mostly forleaders out there when you
recognize your team is goingthrough like their brute force,
lots of manual stuff, and I'mnot saying everything should be
automated because I do notbelieve that, but when you're
seeing that affecting your teamand the quality of the work and
the timeliness of the work andmeeting commitments, does it
(33:14):
make sense to go like let'spause?
Right?
Yes, kind of slow down, yes, tryto get things in order, and then
we can we can speed up afterthat, right?
Once we'll just yeah, yeah.
Have you have you gone throughanything like that before?
SPEAKER_02 (33:31):
Um, I have.
Um I have when I was atStreamSets, which is now part of
IBM, there is this product uhcalled Transformers Snowflake.
I mean, it was it's a dataintegration product, right?
And uh they're doing some um youcould transform your data within
within Snowflake.
And it was like all of a suddensix weeks, you know, six weeks.
(33:54):
It wasn't just because SnowflakeSummit was happening, so there's
that event-led stuff, but thenthere was we have to turn off
all the campaigns, we have tobuild this out, we have to find
the ICP, we've got to find allthe stuff, you know, now the
state, you know, and we werebrute forcing it.
You know, there was no, we werebrute forcing to the N degree
because we had this event comingup.
We were relying on our partnermotions, we were relying on um
(34:17):
also on product, right?
And we had this nice great bigidea of also like, oh, let's do
a free trial with these guystoo, right?
So then we had to pull like theproduct data in part of you
know, part of the automation.
Right.
But you know what?
Because of that brute force, youknow, we actually had to turn it
(34:37):
off because the experience washokey.
But the the and this was acouple years ago now.
So, but what we did learn, welearned something from that.
What we learned was, you knowwhat, if we did that with that
focus, we were just focusing onthat campaign, focus.
Um, you know, can you hear mydog snoring?
Forgive me.
(34:58):
Um uh with that focus, what we,you know, we learned part of a
part of part of the charm of ourour uh podcast, is it?
SPEAKER_00 (35:05):
Real scenes.
SPEAKER_02 (35:08):
Um you know the it was like contract, you know,
accounts were closing like fourtimes faster because of that
focus.
And that's really, you know, ityou know, there's some other
metrics around that, but that'syou know, where brute force can
happen if you're doing it out ofnot just necessity, but but then
(35:29):
you have to say, okay, stop.
How can we iterate from that?
What what did we learn from thatthat we can automate?
What can we do as part of ourpart of our campaign structure,
you know, future planning, thatsort of thing.
SPEAKER_00 (35:42):
Yeah.
I mean, I think I think bruteforcing something for a
time-limited kind of thing,right?
And and one that you go into itgoing like we don't anticipate
that we're gonna repeat this onany kind of regular basis,
right?
I think that's when it makessense.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Um, and I'm all for that.
(36:02):
I'm all for that as opposed togoing out and buying some new
tool, right?
Which is a pretty big shape,right?
That's the yeah.
Um, so that leads me to anotherquestion.
And so in like you, I thinkyou've mostly been in at least
in a marketing role, like highgrowth, constrained resources
environments.
(36:23):
So one of the challenges withthose probably is prioritization
and making sure that you'reeffectively communicating gross
functions.
Like, so what are some lessonsyou've learned from that?
And then my second one, and thisbecause I think there's people
like me who have less of thatexperience and more larger
organizations.
How well do you think some ofthose lessons would scale to
(36:45):
those larger organizations?
SPEAKER_02 (36:46):
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, okay, we can't doeverything, you know, and I
think that the idea of growth atall costs is outdated at this
point, right?
Um, there's uh to a point, twopoint, two point, right?
Um, you know, so this hits homebecause you know, that scrappy
(37:11):
high growth environment whereyou have to you have to know
how, what, who, where, when, allthat, and what resources you
have, you can learn a lot ofthose extremely hard truths
really, really fast, you know.
Sure.
And so, and so this is, youknow, where prioritization, of
course, we just talked aboutthat, but but the folk, the
(37:36):
biggest learning recent, it iseven more recent than anything,
is like, because we can't boilthe ocean, map out, you know,
for an example.
Here's an example of like data.
Um you know, you got webmetrics, you've got campaign
metrics, ad spend, all thesethings, rather than saying,
(37:59):
okay, this is how many web, youknow, website visits we've had
and how many conversions we had,like, okay, instead of that,
tell me the percentage of ourICP that did that.
Tell me that's what I want.
Just focus on that ICP, focus onwho you're trying to reach.
And so that language of just ICPor target accounts or becomes
(38:24):
the focus instead of saying, oh,look at our traffic, you know,
tripled last month, and it'slike, well, yeah, because we
were all at, you know, thisevent.
How many of those, I don't care.
I want to know what the ICP isdoing.
So that's one way to focus thatum is really, I think, critical,
(38:45):
and everybody can get on boardwith, right?
Sales would love it, sure, loveit, execs would love it.
So rather than talking about allthose vanity metrics about, oh,
hey, look at all the people onLinkedIn, like, yeah, sure, but
how many of those are targetaccounts, right?
Um, also that cross-functionalum collaboration, right?
(39:06):
So, you know, we talked aboutsilos a little bit, but you
know, embedding those otherfunctions like within the
process.
So if you're gonna have acustomer success motion, like,
you know, if they're sharingfeedback, have that part of that
function, right?
So it's not just, it's not justokay, Markins doing this and ops
(39:28):
is doing this and and sales isdoing this or whatever.
It's essentially forcing thatregular engagement within the
team, you know, and makingeveryone understand how their
role connects with the finaloutput, which is revenue, you
know.
And I think that's those are thetwo big things.
(39:49):
So we talk, you know, we talkeda little bit about the data, but
also just the team.
It's like, okay, here we'rerefocusing.
So if you're gonna talk to meabout random acts of marketing,
because this webinar would beawesome.
Random acts of marketing.
I love it.
Yeah, that's yeah.
My former VP of marketing uhused to say that it's like,
nope, we're not doing that.
It's a random act of marketing,not on plan, you know, it's not
(40:09):
meeting our ICP.
It's a nice to have, we're notdoing that.
And it's not like beingdraconian about it, it's about
focus.
SPEAKER_00 (40:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so just uh for ops folksout there, like my rule of thumb
in terms of prioritization, likeif there's a a problem with lead
flow, that's generally where I'dlike I give that highest
priority, right?
Even if that means bumping alonger term strategic project.
Sure.
Thing.
Um, because I want I don't wantto be the one, particularly if
(40:37):
it's hand raisers, right?
People who Right.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (40:41):
That's always mission critical.
And also, you know, if you're ifyour campaign, you know, if you
have an email problem, missioncritical.
SPEAKER_00 (40:47):
Yeah, I know.
So like a deliverabilityreputation and that kind of
thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's becoming uh from myrecent experience, it feels like
that's becoming more common tohave issues with that with all
the changes with like whatGoogle's doing and Microsoft's
doing and everybody else, allthe major email providers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um so I want to go back to thiscollaboration piece because I
(41:10):
think one of the one of thethings that breaks down is um
terminology, communication.
Oh yeah.
How do you how do you like howdo you like it?
Feels like there needs to be apart of that is making this is
kind of getting back in themutual understanding piece,
right?
How do you make sure that you'rewhen you're saying things, the
other person's nodding theirhead that are actually have the
(41:30):
same thing in their head, or atleast close to what you were
meaning, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_02 (41:34):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, this is sounderestimated.
Like I I don't even sounderestimated, you know, even
like naming conventions forfolders, right?
Even campaign namingconventions.
Um, that that notion of thatglossary, it's like one of the
first things I've I've alwaysdone, you know, manually.
(41:56):
It's like in, you know, whileyou're talking, you're you're
onboarding with teams and whathave you.
It's like, okay, and yourqualified lead is, and how do
you know it scores?
You know, like that thatvocabulary, and it's everybody
needs to speak the samelanguage, you know.
So when they see a campaignnaming, you know, they know
(42:19):
which campaign that is, who thetarget is, and all that stuff.
They should be able to see that.
They should know that.
That's part of the efficiency.
You know, I nobody needs agazillion, you know, death by
slack cuts, you know, like nomore, no more.
Here's the documentation.
We all agreed on it, too.
(42:40):
That's the other piece, right?
It's like that agreed, andthat's part of like that SLA um
agreement, like that internalagreement.
It's like, okay, this is howwe're defining a lead.
A qualified lead is this type ofaccount, this type of you know,
pharmac, technographic, whathave you.
And then it's like, okay, hereare the customers we want to
grow.
This is why they fit these percriteria.
(43:03):
I mean, it should be front andcenter for the entire team, not
just you know, the marketers andsales, but you know, ops kind of
owns that in a way, you know, orwell, not even just owns it, but
is the keeper, is the gatekeeperof that.
And I am I'm a firm believer ofthat, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:22):
I I even go like up a level.
SPEAKER_02 (43:25):
Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (43:25):
Oh, sure.
Like I don't mean up a level inorganization, maybe up a level
in terms of the thought processis that um so I as you were
talking about, you use the wordscampaign, you use the word lead,
and I think I think theirassumptions, yeah, this is the
whole trope, assumptions.
Yeah, uh, I think they theyactually cause problems, right?
(43:45):
Because people assume you saidcampaign, uh, and I go, oh,
well, you mean a campaign recordin Salesforce or in the right.
SPEAKER_01 (43:55):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (43:55):
Or what you meant was uh there's this broader
campaign that includes we'regoing to do digital media, we're
gonna do stuff on our website,we're gonna send emails, like
all these things, right?
Oh yeah.
Well, like those are verydifferent things.
And I see that very often wherelike we've got this campaign, or
what's going on with thiscampaign, or you know, leads is
another one, right?
(44:15):
Or is it a lead in Salesforce?
Is it a is it uh a qualifiedlead?
Is it somebody who's a returningprospect?
Like those terms, right, requireclarity because it leads to
misunderstandings.
SPEAKER_02 (44:29):
Yes, like that, yes, and it makes um reporting really
hard, it makes telling yourstory really hard, it it makes
everything extremely umdifficult.
And so I used the word draconianearlier.
I am completely draconian aboutthis stuff, you know.
I because because there I don'twant any surprises, you know.
(44:51):
If we talk about marketingqualified accounts, what does
that mean?
Yeah, what does that mean?
It could mean anything, youknow.
SPEAKER_00 (44:59):
So that so that if you pull a report out of
Salesforce and you get the samenumbers, right?
SPEAKER_02 (45:05):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And you know, and and if thereare questions, you know, it's
documented somewhere.
Right.
You know, there's a there's awiki, there's a document,
whatever.
This is what a marketingqualified account is.
Here's a link to what that listis.
Here are the you know, and andum and that communication, I
(45:28):
mean it's just that can reallysave a not just time, but a lot
of frustration and um and um umbad feelings, you know.
So we don't want that.
We don't want that.
And and we it's it's not justit's not just like you know,
tough.
I mean, I think it'sorganizationally imperative, you
(45:49):
know.
I mean the product team shouldunderstand what a product
qualified account is, right?
You know, we don't know, youknow.
SPEAKER_00 (45:56):
I actually don't even care what the terms are
that you use, as long as there'sa shared understanding of what
they are.
No, yes, I have strong opinionsabout what some of those should
be defined as.
Sure.
I'm not I'm like I'm willing tobe flexible within reason.
SPEAKER_02 (46:11):
Yeah, and you know, instead of every meeting also
becoming this debate of thetranslation of what this term
means versus what that metricmeans, whatever, it you're not
talking about that anymore.
We've already decided, you know,it's defined, done.
Let's talk about you know, howare we gonna tighten the sales
cycle?
(46:31):
How are we going to positionourselves?
Why are we not renewing, youknow, those are those are more
important for growth than thantrying to make a magic
definition of something thatsomebody thinks is important,
you know?
Couldn't agree more.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (46:50):
Well, okay, so we're let's wrap up here.
So I think I feel like we haveto end every episode with
something about AI, uh, or atleast have it as part of it,
right?
So how do how do you see AIfitting into all this dynamic,
you know?
Yeah, for marketers and opspros, what are they what do you
what are you seeing out there?
What do you would do you tellthem to watch out for?
SPEAKER_02 (47:10):
Yeah, I mean it is a force multiplier for not just
for ops teams, but foreverybody.
And um, you know, I've seen ithandle some pretty awesome
stuff.
Um I, you know, okay, I I thinkwhere we need to be careful in a
couple of areas, is obviouslyprivacy.
(47:32):
Um you know, that's a given.
But also the data quality, um,you know, is it as good, you
know, if we are feeding datainto something and we have that
layered, like HubSpot has, andyou can just type in whatever it
is that you want to find out.
Um is that is that accurate, youknow?
(47:54):
Um, is there some sort of, youknow, ghostly machine that's
just whipping up somethingrandom that thinks that based on
your history is returningsomething that you want to hear?
Um, you know, and there's alsothat, and you touched on this
earlier, this temptation ofautomating everything, right?
And um in getting so caught upon the tech and so caught up on
(48:18):
on that automation piece thatwe're losing sight of what the
customer journey is like, whatthat human element is like.
Um, you know, we it what itcomes down to is really, you
know, we're all everybody's inbusiness to build relationships
in, you know, and make some uhyou know, that's how a lot of
(48:41):
businesses are built.
Uh just fair enough.
But you know, we're we're you'regonna lose that relationship
piece or that humanity piece,and some of that nuance is also
going to be lost, like some ofyour expertise, you know, your
experiences, how you um, youknow, that strategic thinking
please.
Sure, you know, uh, you know,how are how are you but how are
(49:04):
you connecting the dots inaddition to the AI?
Sure, it's a lot of potential,but I think that seduction of AI
solving everything um is is abit is a bit hairy.
SPEAKER_00 (49:21):
Yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah, I think there's still alot to like it's just evolving
every day.
SPEAKER_02 (49:26):
Yeah, it is.
And there's so much potential,you know.
When I was first playing play, Iwas like, holy cow, what is
happening here?
This is all this this stuff ofwell, because it it normalized
the playing field, right?
In a way, like of go to marketentirely, you know.
It's not just offs folks, it'salso marketers, it's also, you
know, and and so opportunitieslike that are really, really
(49:51):
cool.
You know, they they really,really are.
But you also gotta think aboutautomating everything.
SPEAKER_00 (49:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if enjoy the conversation,Monica, really appreciate it.
You too, Monica.
If if the if if our listeners,followers want to follow your
work or get in touch, what's thebest way they can do that?
SPEAKER_02 (50:10):
Uh just find me on LinkedIn.
That's the best place, that'sthe most active place, that's
where we all hang out.
So Monica Wright, it's just allone word.
That's my my little URL.
SPEAKER_00 (50:21):
So got it.
Perfect.
All right.
Well, yeah, as always, uh well,and also thank you for being a
part of our 200th episode.
SPEAKER_02 (50:28):
I mean, that's like oh yes, I know.
Yay, I should have worn like 200like glasses or something.
SPEAKER_00 (50:34):
Yeah, maybe I should have, since you know, I've been
a part of most of them.
You know, well, again, thank youso much, Monica.
It's been great.
It's been uh a fun conversation.
You too.
Uh thanks to our listeners andsupporters.
As always, we are uh would loveyour feedback.
Uh, if you have any of that,please let us know.
(50:54):
And if you have ideas for topicsor guests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi, Mike, or me, and we'd be
happy to talk to you about that.
Till next time.
Bye, everybody.
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